Steve Thompson's Blog by Steve_Thompson

Hello all. Happy New Year to you. I hope you all had a great Christmas. I had an interesting day on December 27th. I met up with the Leeds team to travel to the game at Newcastle at 9am, so we travelled 2 and a half hours on the coach. We had our pre-match meal and were just about to leave for the game, when we were told it had been called off. That was quite a low feeling. I had really been looking forward to that match, as it was going to be massive for both clubs as we were 11th and 12th in the league. So, it was back on the bus for another two and a half hours to go back to Leeds. Not an ideal situation really.

But we did manage to play on New Year's Day against Gloucester and we earned our first win of the season. It was a fantastic feeling, because it was staged as a double header, with our game first and then the league team - the Rhinos - playing straight after us. It was great because the crowd was good at the start, but just got better and better as the game went on and more of the Rhino’s supporters arrived. I think the last 30 minutes were played in front of 12,000 people. It was an amazing atmosphere and it was a great boost to get a win on the board. It really has been hard to get good team training in, when all the pitches have been frozen. It’s amazing what snow and cold weather can do to a country!! For us, one of the problems is getting the big lads running around and doing line-outs on a 3G rubber crumb pitch, which takes its toll on ankles, knees and backs. So we can’t have long sessions on it. Mind you, we have even turned up to find that pitch has frozen too.

So to keep our fitness levels up, we have had to do rowing, bike and cross training sessions. One of my favorite sessions is on the bike and it goes as follows: 10 secs on level 25, as fast as you can. I try to do over 180 reps; then 30 secs easy; then 10 secs fast; 30 secs easy; 10 secs fast. Then 20 calories burn on level 12, or as fast as you can on the cross trainer. Then 10 secs on the bike again followed by 10 calories burn by going as fast as you can on the cross trainer again. Then 10 secs hard on the bike; 30 secs easy; 10 secs hard; 30 secs easy; 10 secs hard. Do all of that four times with one minute’s recovery between sets. This is a good leg and heart burner!!! (Although you might see you breakfast again…) We are getting close to the Six Nations now. So I have to put in some good performances to keep myself in the mix for that. Fingers crossed I keep playing well for Leeds. And to answer your question, Simon Doyle, I don’t know of any players who have been sent off on purpose to get a Christmas holiday. Personally, I think it’s a great time to play as we tend to get great crowds that time of year. Have a great weekend. More next week.